Why am I not writing about my six week odyssey, crossing the whole of northern America, lurking around the UP, the Upper Peninsula during Labor Day where every fricking campground, federal, state, county, private is filled?  I do my confinement on the edge of Lake Superior, carefully wandering the rocky shore, collecting rocks as everyone else was doing.  Then moving on, paddling on various small lakes until I think, “Enough is enough,” and book down to my homeland, Rappahannock County, Virginia.  Along the way somehow my bad feet heal, two and a half years of hobbling.  I’m whole.  I fly back to Oregon leaving my van to rest until I go back and continue. After a few kisses and hand holding with my hub who somehow allows me to run off and “find my destiny,” I do indeed run to doggie sit at a friend’s place on the coast, the Pacific Ocean coast in case anyone is confused.  The two little pups so tiny and sweet,

but don’t let that fool you.  They are killers too, digging for rodents in the field above.

But what I want to write about is my friend’s upper level master bedroom with its huge windows that look through the fall coloring over the topaz of the Salmon River, more tree upthrusting and finally the ocean, a menace blue line on the horizon.  The illumination that pours into this room inhabits me.  It is the perfect painting light, the one that painting masters catch.  It beckons and blasts.  The bed is adorned with dogs, safe and warm under covers.  A very easy chair swallows me. I lay out my watercolor paint box, water container, brushes, paper towels, and a small piece of mineral paper (see more on that subject below).  I ponder what next. 

And WHAT NEXT happened!  I had a big breakthrough, Everything Is Illuminated as the movie says. I am going to get the feeling of this day, this light, the trees and blue of sky.  I start sloshing sky paint on, dab, dab, add a touch of red. Dab some blue to hold a hoped for repeat color elsewhere. Enough for now.  Dry brush dab some yellowy, greeny, browny. A bit of red. Pat my paper towel where too much water is collecting.  Unlike watercolor paper, mineral paper allows the paint to float on the surface, blending freely with neighbor color whether you intend that or not.  Paper towels control the mess a bit, but I’m letting things

flow. 

Picking up a cut-up credit card I start pulling away color to the white underneath for a hoped for feeling of alders trunks and branches.  I must watch closely until I depart this area for more dabbing and outright erasure of some areas, filling in new color, the hints of old underneath.  I’m getting there, I’m just reacting. I channel an artist friend, Pam, in Rappahannock who has been reacting to brush

stroke after brush stroke for eons.  Hers more hard edged, mine a complete flow. Those puddles of color drying with edges I find annoying are dealt with tiny feathering of a damp brush.  But I’m going to try using those edges soon. I am getting somewhere. 

More, more, I want more.  I want a room of my own in

which to paint. A nest away from everyone where I can fill every surface with drawings, collect more bedeviling flotsam and jetsam, fill the space with the smells of my new aerie here in Oregon.

October 10, 2025